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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23990764">Neighbourly</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clementive/pseuds/Clementive'>Clementive</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Flowers Over Neighbours [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Naruto</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Awkward Romance, F/M, Flowers, Fluff, Gardens &amp; Gardening, Neighbors, Pre-Relationship, Self-Esteem Issues</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 02:01:14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,691</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23990764</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clementive/pseuds/Clementive</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Hinata has always admired her rude neighbour's balcony garden.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Gaara/Hyuuga Hinata</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Flowers Over Neighbours [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1729939</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>62</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Neighbourly</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>It has been a while since I have last been able to write fluff because of the current situation. Here's a small something for rare pair week.</p><p>GaaHina is my softest ship and one of my very first "crack" ships, so it's always exciting and appeasing to churn out something for them.</p><p>Prompt: The moment love hits</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Her neighbour's balcony was beautiful.</p><p>Twined vines and leaves threaded over the wrought iron ran across the entire balcony. Potted plants lined one side and cooking herbs, the other. There was a symmetry in the way the plants were arranged, lines and spirals.</p><p>At sunset, they glowed, vivid colours burnt to a soft yellow and orange.</p><p>In the evening, Hinata would sometimes look up some of the plants' names, scrolling down an endless wall of images of flowers. She noted their names in a small notebook, reciting them to herself, like a mantra.</p><p>Every morning, she glanced out the window over her own bare balcony, chewing on her lip. Her life, like her apartment, like her balcony, was bare.</p>
<hr/><p>Gaara found his neighbour peculiar and unnerving. Too frail. Too inquisitive.</p><p>She would watch his balcony, balanced on her rail, long dark hair loose, her tongue between her lips in a frown of concentration.</p><p>Her white eyes glossing over him, she would still catch him with a coffee mug, the newspaper, or his paper work.</p><p>She would surprise him on a stool by the windows leading to his balcony, leaning on the rail of his balcony at night smoking a shameful cigarette.</p><p>When he was in a long chair, drinking with his siblings, she was always there, somehow, nervous and blushing and bowing and greeting him.</p><p>And her eyes would move without acknowledging him. It chilled him how her face brightened and her pale eyes roamed, unseeing. Mouth stretched, she often uttered the Latin words of his flowers or plants, startling him.</p><p>She never watched him.</p><p>She watched the flowers, like he watched people at night when he couldn't sleep.</p><p>Empty-eyed.</p><p>Empty heart.</p>
<hr/><p>One morning, they were there, erected, between their balconies. The paper screens. They illustrated pale cranes perched over a lake with soft, diluted strokes of ink.</p><p>Hinata stared at them, confused and hurt, her below lip trembling. The flowers, the pots, the vines, they ran and spread on the screen, undulating in the wind, all mere shadows now.</p><p>It unnerved her, how thin and brutal the paper screens were. A wall would have been less cruel, she thought. There would be no shadows, no hint of the flowers behind. She wouldn't feel like something had been taken from her. Like she was a woman of breakable taste and she owned nothing.</p><p>Her sparse furniture, her wooden floor, all appeared paler now. Bare.</p><p><em>She owned nothing</em>.</p><p>Hinata lowered her coffee mug to her empty counter. There was a faint echo around her and inside her.</p><p>She wondered how she didn't notice it earlier.</p><p>Hinata spun on herself, her blood pounding inside her skull. She had bought her condo with her own money, distancing herself from her overbearing formal family. She had moved in, craving freedom, but she had furnished it the way her bedroom had been furnished at her father's estate.</p><p>Freedom terrified her.</p><p>In the first month Hinata moved in, they kept her awake at night, all the things she wanted, tainted by the notion they would be 'bad decisions', that if her sister visited, she would laugh. She had never known that there were so many colours and shapes to choose from.</p><p>
  <em>For everything.</em>
</p><p>So, there was a futon in the bedroom that Hinata folded back every morning, a bookcase and a dresser. At first, she meekly thought she would make them overflow, but she never did.</p><p>She thought she would buy more, crave more, now that she was independent.</p><p>She shook her head, touching her burning cheeks.</p><p>She needed plants, she decided in a hushed whisper.</p><p>She needed life.</p>
<hr/><p>Gaara watched the street below, tired, his eyes dry and burning. His mind roamed empty, when he glimpsed at his neighbour.</p><p>Gaara stepped back on his balcony to avoid being seen if she glanced up at that moment. He averted his gaze, but it drifted back toward her with curiosity. She carried a terracotta pot and two bags in her arms. Her face gleamed, red, sweaty from the effort. Her high ponytail swung around her. She stopped in from of the apartment building entrance. She puffed and frowned, shifting her bags and pot to her left side as she searched for her keys in her pocket.</p><p>Gaara's chest shook with silent, sullen laughter.</p><p>He was certain that woman had never touched a plant in her entire life.</p>
<hr/><p>On her balcony, Hinata yelped, uncomfortable by the greasy feel on her hands, the earthy scent in her mouth. She laughed quietly, then, her hands moved more freely in the soil. She had looked dumbfounded at the cashier when asked if she needed gloves. Now, she understood.</p><p>Humming shakily to herself, Hinata wiped the sweat from her forehead with her upper arm and set to pot her first plant.</p><p>She paused between steps, glancing at her notebook on her one of the patio chairs. Rocks at the bottom, then soil, then the plant, then more soil. She flushed with the sun and her incompetence. She needed instructions to pot a plant.</p><p>Her thighs, her back burnt and her arms shook, unfamiliar with the tools she had bought.</p><p>"You're going to kill it. The pot is too large."</p><p>His words her hit her, pierced her, one after the other, chilling. They rumbled, a threat, a promise.</p><p>Hinata whirled around, yelping. She lost her balance, her limbs uncoordinated and sore. Instinctively, she gripped the pot but fell, nonetheless, to her side. Her breaths ragged, loud to her ears. She closed her eyes, dizzy and embarrassed.</p><p>Her neighbour had taken down the paper screens. He leaned on the ledge of his balcony, holding a coffee mug. His green eyes bore through her, pinning her into place. She touched her face in a nervous gesture she never truly outgrew, smearing dirt and soil on her face.</p><p>Hinata tried to regain her balance and knelt. Blushing furiously, she gently level the plant pot back on her balcony.</p><p>She stood on wobbling knees. She locked them. She bowed, her face still burning.</p><p>"Hello, o-san," she stammered and flinched.</p><p>Her neighbour didn't reply.</p><p>Hinata shyly looked up at him between her bangs. She didn't know what to say. He still watched her, unreadable, his eyes cold, circled by dark blueish skin. His red hair hung low in front of his eyes, messy.</p><p>"You shouldn't have plants, if you can't care for them," he said finally and straightened himself.</p><p>The screen moved back into place.</p><p>Her stomach sank.</p><p>With dangling arms, Hinata looked back at her potted plant, her eyes burning with tears. In her fall, the soil had tossed to one side, her plant crooked.</p><p>She refused to let her tears fall, but her nails couldn't dig deep enough to unearth his words.</p>
<hr/><p>Hinata researched plants in the evening. Her trembling lips gradually stilled to an unwavering line.</p><p>Her thoughts spun out of control, haunting her as they normally did, a mix of her father's words and her neighbour's. She knew this violence inside her. The thumps and thuds of words that knocked her out. She wanted to prove to this stranger that she did care somehow. <em>She could do this. </em>She cared about being full, satisfied, independent, even if she was terrified. <em>She could do this.</em></p><p>Even if she had never touched a plant before.</p><p>As Hinata scrolled down websites and watched videos and took careful notes, she felt hot and competitive and... angry. She startled, her pen hovering over the page. The words of a how-to-do-it-yourself video washed over herself.</p><p>She had never been angry before.</p><p>She had been disappointed.</p><p>She had been trampled, hurt and disgusted with herself.</p><p>She had been competitive only to fold shortly after.</p><p>She had given up and walked away from more situations than she cared to remember, but she had never been angry.</p><p>Instinctively, Hinata looked out the window, at her sole potted plant. It was still crooked, its leaves muddling, bleeding on one another in the darkness.</p><p>She stood up, the video still on, and got out on the balcony.</p><p>Hinata squatted down in front of the plant, her arms around her knees. The night was cool. She touched the plant with the tip of her fingers.</p><p>She chewed on her bottom lip.</p><p>Hinata picked the card up on which she had scribbled the Latin name of her plant and carefully stuck it in the soil.</p><p>"I'll take better care of you," she whispered, and she thought: '<em>I'll take better care of myself.</em>'</p><p>"Do you talk to your plants?"</p><p>Hinata jumped up, then froze. Her hand shook, her breath grew shallower.</p><p>She could only see his pale arms over the rail. He had an unlit cigarette between his fingers. The paper screens hid the rest of his face.</p><p>"Listen," HInata started, but her tongue was lead and her legs were melting. She saw black spots dancing in front of her eyes. '<em>Please, </em><em>god, please, </em><em>don't let me faint.</em>'</p><p>She stepped back.</p><p>She stepped forward.</p><p>'<em>You're rude, say it! </em><em>Say it!</em>'</p><p>Hinata curled her fists and opened her mouth.</p><p>"I do too," he said, and she blinked, her mouth hung open.</p><p>He lingered for a bit, then tapped his cigarette on the rail, still unlit, and disappeared behind the screen. She heard the door open and slide shut.</p><p>She didn't move, petrified.</p>
<hr/><p>The next day, Hinata stepped on her balcony to drink her coffee.</p><p>She blinked rapidly.</p><p>"What..." she said softly and approached her table to set down her coffee mug on top of it.</p><p>Under her patio table, there were packages of seeds, a gardening book and gloves. They were spilled across her balcony as if thrown.</p><p>Hinata blinked rapidly, then looked to her left, her heart hammering against her rib cage.</p><p>The paper cranes looked back at her, pale, fleeting in the dusting sunlight. Across it, his plants projected unsteady reddish shadows.</p><p>Carefully, Hinata bent down and gathered the seeds and book and gloves.</p><p>She nodded to herself, pressing the pile to her chest.</p><p>
  <em>She could do this.</em>
</p><p>Then, she smiled shyly.</p>
<hr/><p>"You were rude, the first time you spoke to me."</p><p>Gaara turned his face toward her.</p><p>Her face was swallowed in the darkness, but her fists curled and opened and shook at her sides.</p><p>"You were always watching..." Gaara said quietly.</p><p>Hinata blinked, her lips wavering. She touched her lips in a nervous gesture, caught herself and clasped her hands firmly behind her back.</p><p>"I like your plants," she replied slowly, so she wouldn't stutter.</p><p>Sweat gathered on her palms. His gaze was hard and cold, shining in the darkness. It wouldn't let her go. It seized her. It scrutinized her.</p><p>It hit and hit, despite the darkness, despite the distance. It hit and hit, how much he cared. She noticed parts of his tattoo under his messy hair, easily guessing the kanji. <em>Love</em>.</p><p>A blush crept up her neck.</p><p>"I was annoyed," Gaara said finally and turned his head back toward the street, his profile barely visible. "I'm sorry."</p><p>Hinata tried to say something, but she had nothing to add. It had taken her everything to form a sentence, demand an apology, and she thought, like she always did, that she wouldn't receive anything in return.</p><p>She expected a sneer.</p><p>She expected disgust.</p><p>She expected anger.</p><p>'<em>Is this how it's supposed to be? Is this how it's supposed to feel... respect?</em>' Hinata asked silently, her shoulders almost to her ears, tensed.</p><p>She relaxed her shoulders.</p><p>Silently, Hinata sat on her heels and potted a second plant. Her hands shifting through the soil, she grew calmer. When she raised her head, he was gone.</p><p>The screen was back in place.</p><p>Hinata sighed, then yelped, hiding behind her hands.</p><p>She had forgotten to thank him for the seeds, book and gloves.</p>
<hr/><p>Hinata hesitated in front of his door unit, her raised fist centimetres from it. She readjusted the pan of brownies in her arms. She chewed on her lip, swaying back and forth.</p><p>It had sounded better in her head: bake the brownies, bring him some, be neighbourly. There was a note tapped where she thanked him for the seeds, gloves and book.</p><p>After five minutes of standing in front of his door, she admitted to herself she would never knock.</p><p>Hinata shook her head and carefully set the brownies in front of his door. Before she could change her mind, she walked quickly back to her apartment.</p><p>Panting, trembling, Hinata leaned back against the door, squeezing her eyes shut.</p><p>She hadn't asked him about allergies or whether he liked sweets. Her teeth dug deeper into her lips. Her mind spiralled. Baked goods, she knew, were often exchanged between neighbours, but <em>this</em> neighbour was different.</p><p>Hinata turned back swiftly, startled, when she heard someone in the hallway. Her hand froze on lock of her door.</p><p>'<em>What have I done?</em>' she asked herself and stepped back from her front door. She heard keys jingling on its other side. She pressed a hand to her mouth, thinking that if she were lucky it would be her neighbour in front of her. If she were lucky, Gaara was home, and he wouldn't open his door any time soon.</p><p>Then, she could retrieve the container and replanned.</p><p>'<em>I'm so</em><em> silly,</em>' Hinata thought miserably.</p><p>She heard the door to her left open and close. '<em>So silly.</em>'</p><p>It was <em>him</em>.</p>
<hr/><p>Gaara knew she was avoiding him, but he couldn't understand why.</p><p>He narrowed his eyes at her balcony. The potted plants were lined past the small patio table in the centre of her balcony. It was too far for him to tell whether she had watered the plants recently.</p><p>In the last week, she hadn't drunk her coffee on her balcony as she normally did before setting out to work. She hadn't added new pots or plants or hung her planters.</p><p>Gaara lingered on his balcony, the paper screen leaning on the wall to the side, his coffee mug half-full, and now cool. He briefly closed his eyes and returned inside.</p><p>After locking the sliding door behind him, Gaara paused, straining to hear if she would emerge now that he was gone.</p><p>He ground his teeth.</p><p>He heard nothing.</p><p>He grabbed his briefcase, leaving his mug in the sink when he passed through the kitchen.</p><p>He went to work.</p>
<hr/><p>Gaara returned her pan the next day, frustrated by her silence, unnerved by her absence.</p><p>He tapped a note to her door. It counted only three words: 'Tonight, 9PM, balcony.'</p><p>He went to work.</p>
<hr/><p>At night, Hinata was already there, by her plants when he stepped on his balcony. His face relaxed.</p><p>"The brownies were good," Gaara said and leaned on the rail.</p><p>Hinata blushed and rubbed her hands together to remove any excess of soil. She stood up slowly to face him.</p><p>She bowed to him.</p><p>"I'm happy you liked them," she said and levelled her head to look at him.</p><p>Gaara inclined his head, observing her in silence.</p><p>Hinata couldn't help it, she flushed.</p><p>She had always hoped there was more to herself. Another way for her to be. Loud. Angry. Headstrong. Anything else than shy and bothersome and breakable.</p><p>She didn't mind her thoughts when she gardened. She didn't mind being her, with his beautiful balcony next to her messy one. Or his scrutiny.</p><p>Her arms relaxed.</p><p>"You aren't not wearing the gloves," he said quietly.</p><p>"I like..." she smiled shyly, her cheeks still burning, but she didn't look away from him. "I like the feel of soil on my hands."</p><p>Gaara considered this then nodded stiff and slow, almost mechanical.</p><p>"I'm Gaara. Don't call me sir anymore."</p><p>Hinata flushed and bowed her head.</p><p>"I'm Hinata," she replied meekly, but she didn't stammer.</p><p>"Don't avoid me anymore, please," he said softly, and again his gaze shifted and every time it did, it hit her, repeatedly, consumed her whole. How he was cold and soft, ice and warmth.</p><p>
  <em>Hit. Hit. Hit.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Heart. Heart. Heart.</em>
</p><p>Gaara grabbed the door handle and gave her a small smile over his shoulder.</p><p>"Good night, Hinata."</p><p>Her heart burst in her chest long after he was gone.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Hope you liked it! Kudos and comments are appreciated!</p><p>Hope you are all safe!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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